And they’re off! … or at least those running the 2011 La Sportiva Mountain Cup are. This year La Sportiva kicked off the Mountain Cup two months earlier than last year in the mountains of North Carolina at the 20th Uwharrie Mountain Run. The Uwharrie Mountain Run is actually three races, an 8 miler, a 20 miler, and a 40 miler, with the 20 miler included in the Cup.

It rained heavily the night before the race. While the storm broke before the 20 milers toed the line, it was still a raw run on a relentless course. Mountain Cup regular Rachel Cieslewicz commented after the race, “it was the wettest, coldest, crazy technical 20 mile trail run I’ve raced.” Others reported “the trail conditions were pretty gnarly” and “a couple people ate it.” Having run the 40 miler, I can assure you that the course is quite technical and unforgiving.

La Sportiva added two new components to the Mountain Cup with year, the Standout Award and a limited edition tee shirt for each race.

With the Standout Award, “the Series will recognize an athlete outside the realm of the top competitors by presenting the Standout Award to a participant who displays some kind of notable achievement regarding the race. Recipients of the Standout Award will receive a pair of La Sportiva Mountain Running shoes and an impressive prize package from the La Sportiva Mountain Running Team’s associate sponsors.” This weekend, the Uwharrie Mountain Run and the Mountain Cup presented the award to Michael Kern. Michael is in his 70s and has run in 5 of the past 7 Uwharrie Mountain Runs. This “super jolly dude” ran the 8 mile race this year. For future Mountain Cup races, we’ll announce the Standout Award winner later in the article.

Michael Kern receiving his La Sportiva Mounain Cup Standout Award.

La Sportiva also will unveil a limited edition tech tee by La Sportiva Mountain Running Team partner Greenlayer at each one of the Mountain Cup races. Tees will be on sale at the La Sportiva booth for $15 each with all the proceeds going to local land trust, nature conservancy and trail running clubs. The tee shirt sales at Uwharrie raised over $1000 for the Land Trust for Central North Carolina. If you want a sense of what the Uwharrie course was like, take a close look at the shirt to the right. The mountain profile… we’ll it’s the race’s elevation profile. Pretty cool, huh?

La Sportiva Mountain Cup Standings
We skipped an update on the Mountain Cup standings in last year’s series premiere and we’ll do so again this year. At this point, the rankings mirror the results exactly. However, we wanted to let you know that we’ll be including a full analysis of LSMC standings after each future race and assure you that these standing updates will get exciting as the series proceeds!

We’ll also take this opportunity to remind you that series results are based on a runner’s top five scoring races. In each race, points are awarded to the top 15 runners of each gender. The top five runners receive 20, 17, 15, 13, and 11 points, respectively. The sixth through fifteenth place runners receive points descending from 10 points for sixth place to 1 point for the final scoring runner. A runner will also receive 2 bonus points for beating another runner who ranked in the series’ top 10 going into the race. You can take a look at the official scoring rules by going to the Mountain Cup website and clicking on the About tab.

One update for this year’s Mountain Cup is the removal of the master’s category. The same total $25,000 purse now spreads 5 deep among the men and women as follows:

$5,000

$3,500

$2,000

$1,5000

$500

iRunFar.com La Sportiva Mountain Cup ContestClassics are classics for a reason and the La Sportiva Crosslite (iRF review) has earned its status as a classic among Sportiva’s trail running line. These neutral, lightweight shoes are heavily nubbed giving you sick traction in the sloppiest of conditions. Looking to tear up the trail in the Crosslite at one of the nine remaining LSMC races? Simply leave your name and town (in the US or Canada) in a comment before we write about the next Mountain Cup race to be run at Nueces 25 on March 5 in Rocksprings, Texas. As a reminder, if you enter to win the Crosslite you’ll also automatically be eligible to win the grand prize at the end of August. Read up on the iRunFar.com La Sportiva Mountain Cup giveaway grand prize.

Call for Comments
If you ran any of the Uwharrie Mountain Run races, please leave a comment letting everyone know how you did and what you think about the race. Past racers are invited to comment, too!

Alright! My crosslites are wearing thin as I've been noticing on my ice/snow runs of late. It'd be great to tackle the Bull Run Run 50 again and the MMT 100 (my first attempt at MMT AND a 100) in a nice new pair of 'em! Is it spring yet?

Hopefully I'll make it out to one of the La Sportiva races this year; I hear Bell Monte is pretty intense though I've more been eyeballing the 50k for that one…

As a father of 4 young children and a full-time librarian, my time on the trails is pretty minimal (and the pocket book is small). However, if I win entrance into one of these races, my family will promise me the appropriate training time to prepare! Isn’t that grand? Too bad it takes something like this to get me out on the trails more, but I’ll take it! And I promise to wear the Crosslites to the race as well!

The t-shirt design looks awesome! Btw, I liked reading your report. It's very inspiring to people who are new runners or marathon runners to see that even in his 70s, Michael Kern can still rock it out in races like this. I'll be looking forward to more of your stories. Good job!